Portland - Silver Falls

For our last day in the Portland area, we wanted a hike that would be challenging but not death-defying, and Silver Falls State Park fit the bill. There are 10, count 'em, 10 falls in the park, with four that have space to walk behind them. Most are large; in the picture above, in the center left you can see a few people for a sense of scale.

Walking behind a waterfall is a very pleasant, if damp, experience.

It seemed like each waterfall we came to on the trail was more beautiful than the last.

And we had another perfectly sunny day to add to the enjoyment.

Here's another falls with a path behind it:

Leading to a view like this:

I'm running out of superlatives, the pictures say it all:

As a perfect postscript to the trip, yesterday I received a surprise gift of art in the mail from Terry Grant. She had driven me past marionberry fields, and introduced me to marionberry pie, and now has she generously given me a permanent memento with this beautiful small art quilt, "Marionberries". I've been a fan of Terry's work for years, I really like her crisp representational style, and this is a great example of how well she designs and executes her ideas. I'm going to have this framed and hang it in my studio--thanks so very much, Terry!

The extra cool part is that when I opened the envelope, I recognized the work immediately, because I had followed its progress on her blog. (Scroll through her May archive here.)